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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, a great deal of the ability to appropriate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to abort legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into budget reconciliation bills, huge perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply shuts down. At least, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

How ‘oppose the president’ messaging may help the state of California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a upcoming vote next month, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have long adopted dramatic partisan gerrymandering while big Democratic-controlled such as California, the Empire State and Washington draw their district lines via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an imbalance that has resulted in closely divided control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California proposal is clearly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented maps that will give Republicans an additional five positions in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable boundary changes are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (Democrats in Virginia are also following the state’s lead in attempting to redistrict.)

The California initiative seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not without debate. Some critics caution that the move could have unintended consequences, with blue states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which red states do additional to draw their maps so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is created in such a way that the outcome of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely democratic: it implies, inevitably, that the influence of opposing views is muted, and that the procedure of debate, argument and persuasion that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their merits. The initial argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a strategic disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic turn, but a kind of sad wish for a different country than the one that the United States has become. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack targeted population groups; it is harmful for elected officials to select their constituents, rather than the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these actions have grown essential in order to slow the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have declined from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. Only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can lament what fighting it has transformed us into.

If the legislative branch does not in reality have legislative, war making or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has utilized of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 is approved and the state’s new representatives are take office, they will find themselves a member of a body with the authority to probe Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer